Bosses of three cladding firms have pocketed more than £300 million since their products fuelled the Grenfell fire, The Sunday Times has revealed.
Seven years on from the disastrous fire, which killed 72 people in West London, the personal payouts of those who profited from the sale of flammable materials far exceed what their companies have paid to fix them.
According to reports in the Sunday Times, bosses of Arconic, Kingspan and Saint-Gobain — which manufactured parts of the tower’s lethal flammable cladding system — have received a total of £302.3 million since the tragedy occurred.
All three manufacturers had made fire-safety claims about their panels that turned out to be false. The products were also fitted on thousands of other buildings, trapping families with flats they cannot sell and leaving taxpayers to pay for repairs.
Crowds gathered this weekend to mark the seventh anniversary of the Grenfell Tower fire, with campaigners saying they are uniting in a “battle for justice” and demanding the next government fixes “this broken country”.
Bereaved who lost loved ones in the Infected Blood scandal and during the pandemic stood in solidarity with the community in west London to make impassioned calls for change.
Those gathered near the site of the tower on Friday evening heard a common call for a national oversight mechanism, an independent public body, to be put in place, responsible for collating, analysing and following up on recommendations from public inquiries.
Five years after 15 recommendations from phase one of the Grenfell Tower Inquiry were made specifically directed at the Government, four remain outstanding, including introducing a legal obligation on landlords to provide personal emergency evacuation plans (Peeps) for disabled tenants.\
Fellow campaigners Lobby Akinnola, on behalf of Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice (CBFFJ) UK, and Jason Evans, who is director of the Factor 8 campaign group, both backed the call on recommendations and joined the Grenfell community for their annual silent walk.
Marcio Gomes, whose son Logan was stillborn after the Grenfell blaze, said campaign groups across the country “are uniting under the same battle for justice”.
Addressing the crowd, he said: “We are proud tonight to share the stage with two other vital campaigns – Infected Blood and Covid.
“And share our call for a national overnight mechanism.
“Tonight we are uniting with all of the bereaved up and down the country who have suffered losing loved ones in state care.
“We stand together tonight to send the new government a message.
“Fix this broken country. Rebuild these broken systems.
“We demand justice, we demand change, we demand charges.”